The storm that gradually rose lasted, with varying fury, for three days. The Curlew proved herself a stanch and buoyant craft, easily controlled and as stiff under sail as a two decker. It was well for all hands that this was so, for the cyclone was a dangerous one, being a stray tempest from that center breeding place of storms, the West Indies. On the second day the two strong men who were required to steer had to be lashed to the wheel. Great combers occasionally swept the decks from bow to stern. After one of these the little schooner would rise, staggering not unlike a drunken man, the brine pouring in torrents from the scuppers, and the very hull quivering from the shock of the impact of those tons of water. The hatches were battened down and after the first day Captain Gary never left the deck. He had food and drink brought to him, as he swung to the weather shrouds, where he at times lashed himself, to avoid being washed overboard. He was the coolest man on the ship, never losing either presence of mind or a certain lightness of spirits, totally unlike the apparently ungovernable fury that possessed him when crossed by any one under his authority. His slight figure and gloved white hands seemed endowed with muscles of steel; he was, to all appearance, impervious to fatigue or fear. "He's a sailor, right," exclaimed Duff one day to Rucker, after Gary had brought the schooner unscathed through a mountainous wave that had threatened to overwhelm everything. "I will say this for him, he knows how to handle a ship." "I should say!" declared the first mate. "There ain't his ekal nowhere. I've sailed with him and I know." When the weather moderated and the schooner, after being tidied up, was plunging along with a double reefed fore and single reefed mainsail, and every one was breathing freely, Duff again thought of Ralph. "Poor fellow," said he to himself, "it's been tougher on him than any of us. He must have thought we were going to Davy Jones any time these three days." Not long after this he saw Long Tom bearing away a covered tin dish from the galley, and hastened to join the boatswain. "Is that the kid's grub?" he demanded, taking off the lid and surveying the contents. "Tis, eh? Well, see here, Bludson, I call it a crying shame. Bread and water still! Heave ahead. I am going to see what kind of a place this sweat box is." The boatswain would have remonstrated, but Duff ordered him on peremptorily. He led the way therefore to a trap door in the floor of the men's quarters in the forecastle. Passing through this with a lighted lantern they pushed forward into the very bow of the vessel, where a small space--three cornered--was walled in. Inside was a form crouched in a corner. The whole area was a mere closet, not only pitch dark within, but several feet below water level and with but a couple of inches of planking between a prisoner and the swashing, gurgling billows outside.